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Fans can join Dodgers' fight against cancer in auction

Fans can join Dodgers' fight against cancer in auction

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Mattingly on SU2C Auction 1:10

Dodgers manager Don Mattingly talks about the Stand Up To Cancer auction and explains how his club is contributing to help raise money

By Ken Gurnick
/
MLB.com |

NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The Dodgers will auction three rare fan experiences in a Stand Up To Cancer fundraiser spearheaded by MLB public relations directors, it was announced Monday at the Winter Meetings.

Up for auction are a lunch with Hall of Fame manager Tom Lasorda; a meet-and-greet with legendary broadcaster Vin Scully; and a 30-minute pitching lesson with coach Rick Honeycutt and a VIP tour at Camelback Ranch-Glendale or Dodger Stadium.

These Winter Meetings include the MLB.com Auction to benefit Stand Up To Cancer, which MLB has supported since 2008 as founding sponsor. Public relations representatives from all 30 clubs were inspired to act based on individual club members impacted by the disease, and they jointly organized the auction and announced it Monday in Nashville with MLB staff. Bidding closes at 8:59 p.m. PT on Thursday with more than 70 baseball-related experiences ranging from clubhouse tours by players to lunches with general managers to team bus rides to meet-and-greets with 14 Hall of Fame players.

"The P.R. directors came together and made it happen," said Joe Jareck, the Dodgers' public relations director who lost his mother to cancer in 2004.

Jareck said the news earlier this year that Mets media relations director Shannon Forde was diagnosed with Stage 4 breast cancer prompted the initiative.

"I was in Kansas City at the All-Star Game and talked to Shannon, and all of a sudden a month and a half later she gets that diagnosis, it just slammed me," Jareck said. "With the resources we have, there was just something we can do.

"My mother was diagnosed in April of 2002 with colon cancer, but it was pretty far along and spread to her liver. She died in January 2004. It's a disease that needs to be caught early, or you're in for the fight of your life."

Ken Gurnick is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.